What's happening in the World of the Miraflors and Evy's Tree

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At the moment, Evy is sitting in her highchair eating cereal, and Jake is on the couch with the ipad playing with the Sprouts app. I am making my coffee. It is beautiful outside, overcast, misty, just gorgeous cold weather. I love it. I’m getting ready to return some emails and get my day started…the kids are home with me today as we are picking up Brandon from the airport today. Overall, its just a nice, cozy morning.

For Brandon on the other hand, well…he missed his flight his morning, so he sat for a couple hours in the Milwaukee airport. There is another flight heading out within a couple hours of his missed one, but it is full, so he is on stand by. Two passengers have to be bumped for him to take the flight. The next flight home would be 12 hours later. If he misses this next flight, he will have to sit in the airport all day long.

When he called me, I have to admit I was a little upset. I scheduled the entire day around picking him up. Canceled the sitter, pushed around my day so I could get him. I thought about the money we might have to spend if he needed to spend the night. I thought about a lot of things that aren’t really important or even that necessary.

Brandon said, “pray I get on the earlier flight.”

Can I be honest with you all? I FORCED myself to pray. I said a simple, “God, let him get on the flight. Amen.” prayer. At that moment I felt NO faith that Brandon would get on that flight. And that bothered me. Big time.

I started thinking about me and my beliefs when I hung up the phone with Brandon about two hours ago. WHY do I struggle with my faith sometimes? Don’t get me wrong, I do have faith. I was raised to have faith. But in the things you SHOULD have faith in {or what the world thinks you should have faith in}. Like I believed that there was an all powerful God. I believed in eternal salvation. But when I was asked to believe in miracles…well, my faith was shaky. Too many people believed and believed and never saw any tangible results, and that shakes me up a bit. I watched families lose loved ones to sickness that we spent years believing God would heal. I have seen people lose their homes, all while believing God would provide. I have seen mothers believe and believe for their children to return to their faith, but the child spend years without even responding.

And this bothers me. I have spent the last two hours silently praying, tears dripping down my cheeks, asking the Lord WHY do I struggle so. What is WRONG with my faith?!?

There are two little birds who are hopping around outside my window. I am watching them pick up dirt, make beautiful music, flit back and forth. I am reminded of my favorite scripture Matthew 6:25-34: “…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store way in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

So WHY am I so faithless?

As I made my breakfast, I started thinking about the four Hebrew children, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who were transported to a foreign land and required to live a life different than theirs {Daniel 1-3}. I thought about the last three boys who refused to bow down to the King’s gods and were thrown into a fiery furnace. Those boys often serve as examples of faith to our young generation…many preachers use their story to encourage youth to be as strong and stand for their faith.

But this morning, while I was reading their story, I got excited. I read again their statement to the king: “…If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from you hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” {Dan 3:17-18}

SO THAT MEANS….

Even the three Hebrew children understood faith. Faith IS NOT believing so blindly about something that when the opposite happens your world is crushed. “FAITH is being sure of what we HOPE for and certain of what we do not see.” {Heb 11:1}. HOPE= anticipation. Desire. It means that there just might be a little room for error. But you hope anyway. You have FAITH. Even if there is a chance that it might not happen.

It means you don’t give up. You still believe. Even if a million other people prove you wrong. Faith means you still HOPE.

I started thinking about those Hebrew boys. Let’s be honest here: They just watched the king come in and besiege their land. Surely they saw other young men refuse to worship the kings gods and were killed right in front of them. Surely they heard the elders say to them, “pray the Babylonians don’t beseech our city” and I’m sure they spent many hours, if not days, praying to their Almighty God to intervene and stop the King from taking over their city and snatching their young men out from underneath them. I’m sure they had faith to be protected and not taken….

But they weren’t. And they still had faith. Because their story was part of a bigger picture…a bigger plan. And sometimes that plan that God has for our lives does include answering your prayers as you would like. And sometimes it doesn’t. The Hebrew children understood that and still vowed to remain faithful: “But if he does not…“.

So what’s the point? STAY FAITHFUL. Don’t stop believing. Continue in hope. Even if God choses to answer your prayers some other way, you have to have faith that God is good and able to do it and if He doesn’t there is a good reason why. Realizing He may not answer like you would want is half the battle. But continuing in faith is the other half. Accepting the fact that it might not happen isn’t lack of faith. It IS faith. Faith would be super easy if you knew that whatever you were believing in was 100% certain. Having faith in something means it must take a little risk, your odds are little less than good. It means seeing the other side of the story and still believing that God is able.

So as I sat there, reading the Word, I began to thank HIM. Because I am ok. My faith is good. My hope is sure. And HE is all powerful. That’s all I need to know. Because that is FAITH.

11 thoughts on “”

Amy, Thank you, thank you, thank you! What an awesome way you presented FAITH! The last week has been hard for us in our church here. We lost a lady (only 48 years old) to cancer. We had believed that God would heal her – but His plan was not our plan. In my mind, I knew all that you stated, but my heart was so heavy. You have renewed my spirit this morning! Thank you for being sensitive to the Lord and for sharing with us this morning!

Tim had struggled with this – but God have him an assurance that through it all, He (God) would still be glorified and it was part of a bigger plan. He told the church this and God has given him a peace!

Thank you for being sensitive to the Lord and for sharing with us this morning! I love and appreciate you SO much!

Amy, I love your transparency. So many blogs I read make me want to gag… "I'm so perfect… Bleh." I appreciate that you share both your struggles and strengths. It's like when the bible says to 'confess our faults one to another and pray for each other, that we can be healed.' There is a strength in knowing that we are not alone in our imperfection, but that there is strength and encouragement in knowing that someone else is praying a straight and directed prayer specifically pertaining to your need. May God continue to bless you today as you grow in faith.

Amy, Thank you so much for becoming transparent and sharing a much needed scripture and thought! A friend and I have been talking about faith for the last few days and your blog came at the perfect time. I will definitely share it with her.

Amy, thank you for sharing this awesome message … My heart is overflowing. I feel like a heavy load has been lifted off of me! If Brandon had not missed his plane you may have missed a valuable time of soul searching and God revealing things to you! His plan we do not see but it does come to us when we least expect it. Thank you again and never hesitate to share as you have today.I love you dearly and know God's plan for you and Brandon is taking place daily! God is faithful!!!

Amy – Thank you for your post today. It brought tears to my eyes and put so much of my life into proper perspective. I too have been struggling with Faith in certain areas of my life, but you stated so perfectly exactly what I needed to hear today.

Great post! Back in January my new year motto was Job 13:15, "Because even if he killed me, I'd keep on hoping." I had some specific prayers that I was praying, and 3 months later I received some awful news. At first I didn't think God has even heard my prayers, but then I realized that he answered them in a big way…just not in the way that I was hoping for. But I know that He does take my upsets and failures in life and works them together for our good, so who or what else can I hope in? This is why my hope is in him…even if he kills me.